Mendelssohn included in his incidental music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream a Wedding March, the most familiar of all such marches. The play, in German translation, was first performed with Mendelssohn's music in 1843 at Potsdam for the King of Prussia, who had commissioned it. It celebrates, in the drama, the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta, whose nuptial celebrations frame the plot. Almost equally familiar is the Wedding March from Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first staged a few years later in Weimar, through the good offices of Liszt, when Wagner, not the most dutiful of husbands, had fled Leipzig, after the suppression of the anti-monarchist rising of 1849, leaving his wife Minna behind. Set in medieval Germany, the opera centres on the mysterious knight Lohengrin, whose name must not be sought by his bride, although finally she is induced to break her word.

Schubert's Ave Maria, Jungfrau mild, is a setting of one of Ellen's songs, a hymn to the Virgin from the work of Sir Walter Scott. It provides a moment of gentle meditation before the brilliance of Widor's Toccata. The grandson and son of organists and organ-builders, Widor moved from Lyon to Paris in 1870, when he became organist at St. Sulpice, a position he held for the next sixty years. The Toccata forms one of the movements in the fifth of Widor's monumental organ symphonies. Equally impressive is the Toccata from the French organist Leon Boëllmann's Suite Gothique.

Jeremiah Clarke's Trumpet Voluntary takes us back to Restoration England, while the nineteenth century French composer Charles Gounod's Ave Maria provides a well known moment of romance, based as it is on a Prélude by Johann Sebastian Bach, who never dreamed of such a thing. Ideas of love return in Handel's Largo, although his hero Serse, at this moment in the opera, is expressing his vegetable love for a plane-tree, to the amusement of those hidden to observe him. It is followed by a well known Trumpet Tune by Henry Purcell.

The name of Albinoni has enjoyed particularly wide fame in recent years through a composition written by a modern scholar and admirer of his work, the Italian Giazotto. The Adagio, alleged by its composer to be based on a fragment of Albinoni, may at least be a tribute to the early eighteenth century Venetian master. His prolific contemporary in Venice, Antonio Vivaldi, is here represented by a slow movement from a Trio Sonata.

Johann Sebastian Bach, the most distinguished member of a widespread musical dynasty in Saxony, based a chorale prelude on the Christmas In dulci jubilo, while two cantatas provide the movements Jesus bleibet meine Freude and Schafe konnen sicher weiden, known in English as Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring and Sheep May Safely Graze.

Johann Strauss takes us into a very different mood, a party after the wedding ceremony, with two waltz sequences, the Emperor Waltz cleverly named to please either the German or Austrian Emperor, and the Blue Danube celebrating the river on which Vienna lies.

Bertalan Hock

The Hungarian organist Bertalan Hock was born in Budapest in 1953 and studied at the Liszt Academy in Budapest and subsequently at the Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar. Since 1976 he has served as organist of the Matthias Church in Buda, where he supervised the reconstruction of the organ. Bertalan Hock has a repertoire ranging from Bach to the contemporary and has given concerts abroad in addition to his concert appearances and recordings in Hungary. These last include a number of discs for Hungaroton, including recitals on the Matthias Church Rieger organ.

György Geiger

György Geiger was born in Budapest in 1944 and after graduating from the Béla Bartók Conservatory of Music continued his studies at the Liszt Academy. While still a student he was appointed first trumpet in the Budapest State Opera Orchestra, a position he held for four years, before accepting a position as principal trumpet with the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 1975 the Modern Brass Ensemble was founded under his leadership and since 1979 he has also served as trumpet professor at the Liszt Academy. Awards include the Ferenc Liszt Prize in 1980 and the Hungarian Artisjus prize for his services to contemporary Hungarian music. His recordings include three solo releases for Hungaroton.

Budapest Strauss Ensemble

Founded in 1986 by István Bogár, the Budapest Strauss Ensemble consists of players from the finest of Hungarian symphony orchestras. Although dedicated to the rediscovery and performance of music by the celebrated Strauss family from Austria, the orchestra has a wide repertoire in performance and frequently plays works by such composers as Brahms, Bartók, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Liszt, Couperin and Ravel. Many of the leading players are soloists in theirown right and the leader, Peter Hidi, was a recipient of the Liszt Prize.

István Bogár

István Bogár was born in Budapest in 1937 and graduated from the Ferenc Liszt Academy as a composer in 1963, after earlier instrumental studies. In 1968 he became deputy editor-in-chief of Editio Musica Budapest and in 1972 he was appointed to the position of dramaturge for the National Philharmonic. Since 1976 he has been musical secretary to the Hungarian State Orchestra, under János Ferencsik, and since 1983 director of the music ensembles of the Hungarian Radio.

In addition to his varied work in musical administration, Bogár has won a reputation as a composer and as a conductor, often of his own compositions. He has appeared in recent years with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and the Budapest Strauss Orchestra, touring Switzerland and France with successful programmes devoted to the work of Johann Strauss. This has brought invitations from Italy, Belgium and England for further tours.